This is offensive in so many ways, it seems like a shame to let facts enter into the equation, but...
1. Much of the copying the RIAA complains about is completely legal under the Home Recording Act. As such, it isn't piracy at all. 2. It is amazing that the record industry seems to think it has a right to be immune to the economy. 2001 was a year of massive layoffs and dot.com implosion. IT workers, people who ordinarily have the kind of discretionary income to support large CD collections were especially hard-hit. 3. Napster, the largest and most visible source for swapped files spent much of 2001 under an injunction that severely hobbled it. If anything, 2001 should have brought less so-called piracy than 2000. 4. C'mon now. Weren't boy bands and teeny-girls starting to grow a little stale in 2001? To generate sales, you gotta deliver product worth buying.
But, the biggest kicker of all: 2. The RIAA very politely posts sales figures for the last ten years on its web site. Some interesting nuggets:
Total CD volume in 2000 (a year with Napster in full force, by the way) were the highest level in history and nearly 3 times the level of 1991. However, from 1991-2000, sales of cassettes dropped off about 80%, Sales of vinyl LPs continued their slide into oblivion, at about 45% of the 1991 levels.
Sales of CDs increased every single year except for 1997, covering all of the years in which Napster was unencumbered by injunctions. Sales rebounded to record high levels in 1998, by the way, hitting new records in 1999 and 2000.
One more thing: 2001 mid-year volume, in a recession, was 397.9 units. That may be 22.7 units lower than the same period in 2000, but it is 1.1 units higher than in 1999. In fact, those recession-year statistics represent the SECOND HIGHEST volume from 1991 to the present.
I'll bet a lot of businesses would have been thrilled to book their second-best year in history during 2001.
4. Many PC sales go to corporations that are notoriously (and understandably) slow to change from existing technology.
5. Many PC sales are replacement sales and don't call for much in the way of demos or explanations
6. PCs are sold through many more outlets than Macs.
7. XP just isn't interesting enough to gather a crowd.
Mind you, I don't use either. I have one NT 4.0 box and several Linux and FeeBSD machines. I have to admit, though, if I decide to pony up for new iron, I will give the new Macs a close look.
Gosh, I hope that you are a better physicist than you were a lawyer. I used to be a lawyer, too, and it sounds like I was a better lawyer than you.
The GPL is not keyed to selling anything. It is keyed to distribution. In fact, the closest thing the GPL contains to the kind of exception you're describing is in section 3(c), describing an alternative means of distributing source code whereby noncommercial third parties can simply pass along the information that informs recipients where and how to obtain source code.
Any distribution by the Lindows folks outside of their organization will be commercial whether they charge for binaries (Oh! Gee! They're even charging for the beta) or not. Lindows is a commercial enterprise and their releases are part of furthering that enterprise.
There is no serious question that people who purchase their beta are entitled to purchase or otherwise receive the source code. In fact, if you'll read carefully, they're entitled to receive it in machine readable form via the mail.
5 years? Sigh. More pundits "killing" more things
on
Trouble Ahead for Java
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· Score: 2
The first thing that caught my attention was the 5 year timespan. Does anything last five years in computing any more? Seems these days that things flame out fairly quickly, say within 2 or 3 years, or hang on damned near forever.
Java seems to be in the damned near forever category. There is a lot to recommend it, but, more importantly, there is already a lot of java code out in corporate infrastructures and corporations don't like to rewrite from the ground up.
That's not to say java won't shrink in terms of overall importance. That seems a likely outcome of more competition, especially given the poor experiences many people have had trying to implement java-based solutions.
C# is only one -- though a signficant one. Off in the weeds, python use is slowly growing, and python can fill many of the same purposes served by java. With Mozilla finally biting the bullet and declaring an API-frozen 1.0, some of its tools might also find a spot.
Java is like every other technology that ever existed: sooner or later something or some things come along to displace it. Not kill it necessarily, but displace it.
The author does not seem to understand the scope of fair use. Fair use includes more than just 'time shifting'. It includes such uses as parody and commentary.
Though Congress codified fair use into the Copyright Act, it did not create fair use. Rather, the addtion of fair use provisions to the lawy merely recognized the fair use exceptions that had been developed by courts over nearly two centuries of copyright law.
The truth is that some of those fair use rights -- specifically parody and commentary do, in fact, have their roots in Constitutional guarantees and cannot easily be nullified by Congress.
I can see it now: Pretty much the same movie as before, but jazzed up a bit. The big diff: When poor Jilly gets the all-over spray paint makeover, she no longer suffocates. Not only is she electrocuted, but her body continues to power a flashing neon sign that says simply, "This, 007, is a clue."
Something in my dinner must have been spoiled last night, becasue this dream isn't even funny.
Microsoft, the monopolist, the Marquis de "lock-in", the ace of audits, the prince of product activation, the squire of "We don't need no stinkin' interoperability", is running ads warning IT shops about painting themselves into corner?
Damn!
At least the whine about expensive experts makes sense. Anybody dumb enough to buy this pitch is sure to feel uncomfortable around people who know what they're doing.
Bias report: I am a registered (bought and paid for) licensee of the Crossover plugin. Love watching Quicktime and even tolerate Windows Media Player. I am pleased to see these folks doggedly banging away at WINE and, concurrently, identifying specific market niches that can help them bring in a few dollars.
I'm not likely to buy this one because I don't need MS Office and $55 will buy some things I do want or need... however...
Boy, do I hope this works as well as the plugin. Office is a major stumbling block for many people (not that it should be, just is).
More to the point: If they can run Office well enough to be worth the trouble, how much more software is just around the bend?
The reasons to resist are melting, my pretty, melting, melting...
What AOL has to consider is its 34million users turning round and saying "the latest version of AOL is broke", if it's not rendering IE specific content correctly.
The major sites will support AOL right away because AOL is in direct contact with them. Most of the other sites will support it very quickly because the clients (the ones who actually pay the web designers) will not want to surrender that much business.
Other sites will follow behind because, in time, people will get out of the habit of designing IE only sites.
The others? Who cares. People will judge them as rinky-dink amateur efforts because all of the important sites will work fine.
Not bad for a lawyer
on
SSSCA Editorials
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· Score: 3, Informative
Hope my lawyering background doesn't bias me here, but I thought he did all right for a lawyer.
Too much time on the freedom vs. reliability thing. Sure, making reliable machines means curtailing freedom, but not the freedoms he thinks. It means curtailing the freedom of developers to do bad things in the code they write, not curtailing their freedom to deliver capabilities to the consumer.
What he missed altogether was the potential for reduced reliability as the result of systems designed to keep you from doing things. As with all things done by mere humans, there will be bugs, there will be shortcuts, there will be...oh, you get the idea.
The end result will be things that don't work that would work in the absence of controls.
OTOH: He is bang-on about letting the market decide and bang-on about the ultimate loss of utility that comes with content providers' desire to clamp down on PCs.
AOL has had the opportunity to watch Microsoft screw anybody and everybody who got in their way.
Microsoft is pushing MSN. Microsoft is pushing.NET. Microsoft is pushing Passport. Microsoft is pushing Windows Media Player. etc.
If you are AOL, and Microsoft makes your browser engine, you have got to be concernede that you will be on the wrong side of some little "oops" like the one that recently made Quicktime plugins go poof, or made DR DOS go poof, or what have you.
AOL needs to break free of IE as a matter of self preservation. The world will then be a better place for all of us.
GPL is a funny concept with regard to books, as books are inherently open source (as opposed to Open Source) and , as an author, you don't generally want anybody modifiying your work.
I agree on the vanity press with a small quibble. Vanity Press generally (though not always) refers to a publisher for hire. They may take the rights to your work and pay you on a royalty basis. That kind of Vanity Press can rip you off as thoroughly as any other publisher. Self publishing is a slightly different thing. You contract with a press for the purpose of printing up your books, but you retain all rights and do (or arrange) all the actual publishing work. You get paid based on a sales - costs basis, not on a royalty basis.
Whatever you call it, going your own way is an increasingly attractive option. If I ever finish my book instead of vying for the "world's longest gestation" award, I will most certainly self-publish. (As if I have a choice: Hemingway I ain't;0) )
You are absolutely right: If I'm not going to make any money on the thing, at least let me retain ownership and not be ripped off in the process.
I couldn't help but think of Tom Daschle's complaints that he wasn't informed about the 175-200 officials who are kept in bunkers in the event of a disasterous attack on Washington.
When classified documents end up in the hands of the New York Times, the administration has a ready-made answer any time a legislator whines about not getting information that he or she isn't legally guaranteed.
The real question, it seems, is this:
Knowing what patriots we have in the press and throughout Congress, does that document relate more to our actual strategies, or more to what we want certain other parties to believe our strategies to be?
The freakin' Titanic was only 900 feet long and needed 31,000 steam-driven shaft horsepower just to get halfway across.
Thousand foot wooden ships with a single sail every hundred feet or so were either a remarkable engineering accomplishment or a mariner's nightmare.
Re:Cut and dried Copyright violation
on
Abusing the GPL?
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· Score: 2
Oops! You're not the original poster.
It's HIS (or her) company that needs the better lawyer. ;0)
Re:Cut and dried Copyright violation
on
Abusing the GPL?
·
· Score: 2
You're making the right point, but drawing the wrong conclusion.
The real problem with this scheme is not that it violates the GPL, but that it is wasting the company's time without giving the protection they think they are getting.
Copyright law treats an arbitrary translation of the sort a code obfuscator would generate as being the equivalent of the original,very much like translating books from one language to another.
Therefore, your lovely GPL'd code could be de-obfuscated and distributed because it's GPL'd. Your company might fight it, but, in the end, that would be a second round of resources wasted for no good purpose.
Kind of funny from an environmental standpoint. Water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide, while far less effective, is also a greenhouse gas.
I see lots of EE types checking in. I'm no EE, not even an E, though I've got a serious affection for DD's anytime I see them and my feet are EEEE wide.
You guys who are saying this is impossible or impractical are in for some real egg on your face, though it's hard to say when.
I managed to spirit one of these out of the IBM labs and they are fast! In fact, they're so fast that you've got to start them up tomorrow in order to do something today, which is ok, because, once they crank, they start delivering yesterday.
Very cool. I just had Isaac Newton help me with a couple of things. By tomorrow, I should be looking up da Vinci, unless I get careless and work my way all the way back to Pythagoras.
Of course, it's tricky staying one step behind the IBM guys. They came by for me yesterday, but I hadn't started up yet. They almost got me last month, but I gave 'em the slip the year before.
I'll admit to being concerned about a charge for SO 6.0, but I'm not too upset yet.
If the charge is reasonable, and I get appropriate value / support, I will be willing to pony up. I rely heavily on my Office software and don't begrudge Sun the chance to make a few dollars -- if they are making my life a little better.
It's hard for me to get too upset knowing that Open Office remains free and available if I don't like the deal Sun offers.
Lessig is not one of my favortie legal commentators, but, with some quibbles, he has this issue just about right, particularly with regards to software.
Software copyrights are an abomination. We grant a government monopoly, albeit a much thinner monopoly than the one granted for patents, and get nothing in return.
No revelation of source code, and, given the long terms, no public domain software. For all the talk of nasty patents, at least patents expire within a lifetime and require publication of their underlying process.
One way or the other, if software is to be protected by warping the free market -- which is what a monopoly does, something must be given back to society to offset the disturbance.
Makes me think of the old Mary Tyler Moore show episode when Chuckles the Clown bit the big one and Mary can't keep from laughing at the funeral.
I keep thinking of "The Rabbit of Seville", the great BB sendup of "The Barber of Seville".
Can you imagine a kid's short openly aping a classic opera? Doing it so well? Being so funny, even if you never heard a tenor go ten-ing?
I don't Chuck will rest in peace if he's laid to rest in a cemetary. If anyone can get a graveyard giggling, he's the man.
But what about hot dogs and apple pie?
on
The Future of MREs
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· Score: 5, Funny
Macaroni and cheese? What next? Peanut butter and jelly?
I can see it now.
"Hey, soldier. Get up at the crack of dawn, lug around a hundred pound pack through all kinds of terrain, in all kinds of weather. Maybe get shot at. Maybe have to shoot back. Maybe get your sorry butt killed.
But if you manage to make it back to camp, you can have three year old mac and cheese."
I see some references to site licenses in assorted responses, references that make me cringe.
All site licensees should remember who it is they are dealing with. In the not too distant past: At least one cancer research center had its budget seriously dinged when MS educational licenses ceased to apply.
Large corporations everywhere were pressured into Enterprise Agreements requiring them to keep current levels of Microsoft software.
And so on.
The Enterprise Agreements are especially interesting if you remember the original plans for Windows ME. Microsoft originally planned to strip out all network support in an effort to force businesses to upgrade to W2K.
They ended up backing down that time.
Now, however, imagine a plan that requires clients to upgrade their software but doesn't require Microsoft to guarantee that the upgrade will contain the same functionality.
Oh well. None of my business. People dumb enough to get into these situations deserve what they get.
Slashdot Mirror
This is offensive in so many ways, it seems like a shame to let facts enter into the equation, but...
1. Much of the copying the RIAA complains about is completely legal under the Home Recording Act. As such, it isn't piracy at all.
2. It is amazing that the record industry seems to think it has a right to be immune to the economy. 2001 was a year of massive layoffs and dot.com implosion. IT workers, people who ordinarily have the kind of discretionary income to support large CD collections were especially hard-hit.
3. Napster, the largest and most visible source for swapped files spent much of 2001 under an injunction that severely hobbled it. If anything, 2001 should have brought less so-called piracy than 2000.
4. C'mon now. Weren't boy bands and teeny-girls starting to grow a little stale in 2001? To generate sales, you gotta deliver product worth buying.
But, the biggest kicker of all:
2. The RIAA very politely posts sales figures for the last ten years on its web site. Some interesting nuggets:
Total CD volume in 2000 (a year with Napster in full force, by the way) were the highest level in history and nearly 3 times the level of 1991.
However, from 1991-2000, sales of cassettes dropped off about 80%,
Sales of vinyl LPs continued their slide into oblivion, at about 45% of the 1991 levels.
Sales of CDs increased every single year except for 1997, covering all of the years in which Napster was unencumbered by injunctions. Sales rebounded to record high levels in 1998, by the way, hitting new records in 1999 and 2000.
One more thing: 2001 mid-year volume, in a recession, was 397.9 units. That may be 22.7 units lower than the same period in 2000, but it is 1.1 units higher than in 1999. In fact, those recession-year statistics represent the SECOND HIGHEST volume from 1991 to the present.
I'll bet a lot of businesses would have been thrilled to book their second-best year in history during 2001.
Actually, it suggests a few other things:
4. Many PC sales go to corporations that are notoriously (and understandably) slow to change from existing technology.
5. Many PC sales are replacement sales and don't call for much in the way of demos or explanations
6. PCs are sold through many more outlets than Macs.
7. XP just isn't interesting enough to gather a crowd.
Mind you, I don't use either. I have one NT 4.0 box and several Linux and FeeBSD machines. I have to admit, though, if I decide to pony up for new iron, I will give the new Macs a close look.
The GPL is not keyed to selling anything. It is keyed to distribution. In fact, the closest thing the GPL contains to the kind of exception you're describing is in section 3(c), describing an alternative means of distributing source code whereby noncommercial third parties can simply pass along the information that informs recipients where and how to obtain source code.
Any distribution by the Lindows folks outside of their organization will be commercial whether they charge for binaries (Oh! Gee! They're even charging for the beta) or not. Lindows is a commercial enterprise and their releases are part of furthering that enterprise.
There is no serious question that people who purchase their beta are entitled to purchase or otherwise receive the source code. In fact, if you'll read carefully, they're entitled to receive it in machine readable form via the mail.
Java seems to be in the damned near forever category. There is a lot to recommend it, but, more importantly, there is already a lot of java code out in corporate infrastructures and corporations don't like to rewrite from the ground up.
That's not to say java won't shrink in terms of overall importance. That seems a likely outcome of more competition, especially given the poor experiences many people have had trying to implement java-based solutions.
C# is only one -- though a signficant one. Off in the weeds, python use is slowly growing, and python can fill many of the same purposes served by java. With Mozilla finally biting the bullet and declaring an API-frozen 1.0, some of its tools might also find a spot.
Java is like every other technology that ever existed: sooner or later something or some things come along to displace it. Not kill it necessarily, but displace it.
The author does not seem to understand the scope of fair use.
Fair use includes more than just 'time shifting'. It includes such uses as parody and commentary.
Though Congress codified fair use into the Copyright Act, it did not create fair use. Rather, the addtion of fair use provisions to the lawy merely recognized the fair use exceptions that had been developed by courts over nearly two centuries of copyright law.
The truth is that some of those fair use rights -- specifically parody and commentary do, in fact, have their roots in Constitutional guarantees and cannot easily be nullified by Congress.
Ummm...
Getting closer, but still no cigar.
Dick Gephardt is the Minority Leader of the House. Yes, he is a Democrat.
Tom Daschle is the Senate Majority Leader and, of course, he is also a Democrat.
I can see it now:
Pretty much the same movie as before, but jazzed up a bit.
The big diff: When poor Jilly gets the all-over spray paint makeover, she no longer suffocates.
Not only is she electrocuted, but her body continues to power a flashing neon sign that says simply, "This, 007, is a clue."
Something in my dinner must have been spoiled last night, becasue this dream isn't even funny.
Microsoft, the monopolist, the Marquis de "lock-in", the ace of audits, the prince of product activation, the squire of "We don't need no stinkin' interoperability", is running ads warning IT shops about painting themselves into corner?
Damn!
At least the whine about expensive experts makes sense. Anybody dumb enough to buy this pitch is sure to feel uncomfortable around people who know what they're doing.
Bias report: I am a registered (bought and paid for) licensee of the Crossover plugin. Love watching Quicktime and even tolerate Windows Media Player. I am pleased to see these folks doggedly banging away at WINE and, concurrently, identifying specific market niches that can help them bring in a few dollars.
I'm not likely to buy this one because I don't need MS Office and $55 will buy some things I do want or need...
however...
Boy, do I hope this works as well as the plugin.
Office is a major stumbling block for many people (not that it should be, just is).
More to the point: If they can run Office well enough to be worth the trouble, how much more software is just around the bend?
The reasons to resist are melting, my pretty, melting, melting...
What AOL has to consider is its 34million users turning round and saying "the latest version of AOL is broke", if it's not rendering IE specific content correctly.
The major sites will support AOL right away because AOL is in direct contact with them. Most of the other sites will support it very quickly because the clients (the ones who actually pay the web designers) will not want to surrender that much business.
Other sites will follow behind because, in time, people will get out of the habit of designing IE only sites.
The others?
Who cares. People will judge them as rinky-dink amateur efforts because all of the important sites will work fine.
Hope my lawyering background doesn't bias me here, but I thought he did all right for a lawyer.
Too much time on the freedom vs. reliability thing.
Sure, making reliable machines means curtailing freedom, but not the freedoms he thinks. It means curtailing the freedom of developers to do bad things in the code they write, not curtailing their freedom to deliver capabilities to the consumer.
What he missed altogether was the potential for reduced reliability as the result of systems designed to keep you from doing things. As with all things done by mere humans, there will be bugs, there will be shortcuts, there will be...oh, you get the idea.
The end result will be things that don't work that would work in the absence of controls.
OTOH: He is bang-on about letting the market decide and bang-on about the ultimate loss of utility that comes with content providers' desire to clamp down on PCs.
AOL has had the opportunity to watch Microsoft screw anybody and everybody who got in their way.
.NET.
Microsoft is pushing MSN.
Microsoft is pushing
Microsoft is pushing Passport.
Microsoft is pushing Windows Media Player.
etc.
If you are AOL, and Microsoft makes your browser engine, you have got to be concernede that you will be on the wrong side of some little "oops" like the one that recently made Quicktime plugins go poof, or made DR DOS go poof, or what have you.
AOL needs to break free of IE as a matter of self preservation.
The world will then be a better place for all of us.
GPL is a funny concept with regard to books, as books are inherently open source (as opposed to Open Source) and , as an author, you don't generally want anybody modifiying your work.
;0) )
I agree on the vanity press with a small quibble. Vanity Press generally (though not always) refers to a publisher for hire. They may take the rights to your work and pay you on a royalty basis. That kind of Vanity Press can rip you off as thoroughly as any other publisher. Self publishing is a slightly different thing. You contract with a press for the purpose of printing up your books, but you retain all rights and do (or arrange) all the actual publishing work. You get paid based on a sales - costs basis, not on a royalty basis.
Whatever you call it, going your own way is an increasingly attractive option. If I ever finish my book instead of vying for the "world's longest gestation" award, I will most certainly self-publish. (As if I have a choice: Hemingway I ain't
You are absolutely right: If I'm not going to make any money on the thing, at least let me retain ownership and not be ripped off in the process.
I couldn't help but think of Tom Daschle's complaints that he wasn't informed about the 175-200 officials who are kept in bunkers in the event of a disasterous attack on Washington.
When classified documents end up in the hands of the New York Times, the administration has a ready-made answer any time a legislator whines about not getting information that he or she isn't legally guaranteed.
The real question, it seems, is this:
Knowing what patriots we have in the press and throughout Congress, does that document relate more to our actual strategies, or more to what we want certain other parties to believe our strategies to be?
On nine sails?
The freakin' Titanic was only 900 feet long and needed 31,000 steam-driven shaft horsepower just to get halfway across.
Thousand foot wooden ships with a single sail every hundred feet or so were either a remarkable engineering accomplishment or a mariner's nightmare.
Oops!
You're not the original poster.
It's HIS (or her) company that needs the better lawyer.
;0)
You're making the right point, but drawing the wrong conclusion.
The real problem with this scheme is not that it violates the GPL, but that it is wasting the company's time without giving the protection they think they are getting.
Copyright law treats an arbitrary translation of the sort a code obfuscator would generate as being the equivalent of the original,very much like translating books from one language to another.
Therefore, your lovely GPL'd code could be de-obfuscated and distributed because it's GPL'd. Your company might fight it, but, in the end, that would be a second round of resources wasted for no good purpose.
Your company needs a better lawyer.
Kind of funny from an environmental standpoint.
Water vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide, while far less effective, is also a greenhouse gas.
I see lots of EE types checking in. I'm no EE, not even an E, though I've got a serious affection for DD's anytime I see them and my feet are EEEE wide.
You guys who are saying this is impossible or impractical are in for some real egg on your face, though it's hard to say when.
I managed to spirit one of these out of the IBM labs and they are fast! In fact, they're so fast that you've got to start them up tomorrow in order to do something today, which is ok, because, once they crank, they start delivering yesterday.
Very cool. I just had Isaac Newton help me with a couple of things. By tomorrow, I should be looking up da Vinci, unless I get careless and work my way all the way back to Pythagoras.
Of course, it's tricky staying one step behind the IBM guys. They came by for me yesterday, but I hadn't started up yet. They almost got me last month, but I gave 'em the slip the year before.
I'll admit to being concerned about a charge for SO 6.0, but I'm not too upset yet.
If the charge is reasonable, and I get appropriate value / support, I will be willing to pony up. I rely heavily on my Office software and don't begrudge Sun the chance to make a few dollars -- if they are making my life a little better.
It's hard for me to get too upset knowing that Open Office remains free and available if I don't like the deal Sun offers.
Lessig is not one of my favortie legal commentators, but, with some quibbles, he has this issue just about right, particularly with regards to software.
Software copyrights are an abomination. We grant a government monopoly, albeit a much thinner monopoly than the one granted for patents, and get nothing in return.
No revelation of source code, and, given the long terms, no public domain software. For all the talk of nasty patents, at least patents expire within a lifetime and require publication of their underlying process.
One way or the other, if software is to be protected by warping the free market -- which is what a monopoly does, something must be given back to society to offset the disturbance.
Makes me think of the old Mary Tyler Moore show episode when Chuckles the Clown bit the big one and Mary can't keep from laughing at the funeral.
I keep thinking of "The Rabbit of Seville", the great BB sendup of "The Barber of Seville".
Can you imagine a kid's short openly aping a classic opera? Doing it so well? Being so funny, even if you never heard a tenor go ten-ing?
I don't Chuck will rest in peace if he's laid to rest in a cemetary. If anyone can get a graveyard giggling, he's the man.
Macaroni and cheese?
What next?
Peanut butter and jelly?
I can see it now.
"Hey, soldier. Get up at the crack of dawn, lug around a hundred pound pack through all kinds of terrain, in all kinds of weather.
Maybe get shot at. Maybe have to shoot back.
Maybe get your sorry butt killed.
But if you manage to make it back to camp, you can have three year old mac and cheese."
Bet the recruiting lines are a mile long.
Make nuclear proliferation seem like peanuts if the next Mr. Coffee can start a chain reaction that ends the universe.
With or without cream.
All site licensees should remember who it is they are dealing with.
In the not too distant past:
At least one cancer research center had its budget seriously dinged when MS educational licenses ceased to apply.
Large corporations everywhere were pressured into Enterprise Agreements requiring them to keep current levels of Microsoft software.
And so on.
The Enterprise Agreements are especially interesting if you remember the original plans for Windows ME. Microsoft originally planned to strip out all network support in an effort to force businesses to upgrade to W2K.
They ended up backing down that time.
Now, however, imagine a plan that requires clients to upgrade their software but doesn't require Microsoft to guarantee that the upgrade will contain the same functionality.
Oh well. None of my business. People dumb enough to get into these situations deserve what they get.